Most often, keeping a band of talented individuals together is the toughest thing in the popular music business. The clash of egos, constant travel and close quarters, conflicting ambitions and just simple personal quirks can make working together a chore for even the best musicians.That's what makes it so remarkable that Sugar Ray & the Bluetones are grinning their way through their 35th year as a band, with a brand new album just out, and summer full of shows at all the best blues and roots festivals.Sugar Ray & the Bluetones, fronted by singer and harmonica virtuoso Sugar Ray Norcia, also includes Marshfield's Anthony Geraci on keyboards, Mudcat Ward on bass, Neil Gouvin on drums, and the comparative rookie in the group, in 'only' his fifteenth year, Monster Mike Welch on guitar.Sugar Ray & the Bluetones will be appearing at several area shows in the coming weeks, including next Saturday (August 9) at the Gloucester Blues Festival, and Sunday August 24 at the North River Blues Festival at the Marshfield Fair. On September 20, they're scheduled to perform at the South Shore Conservatory in Hingham. And if that August itinerary of Gloucester-to-Marshfield seems easy to you, consider that the quintet squeezes a week in Switzerland in between those dates, for like many American roots acts, they are exponentially more popular in Europe."Living Tear to Tear," the sixth album for the band on Severn Records, and the eighth overall under the Sugar Ray & the Bluetones monicker, will be released on August 19. The CD's dozen cuts include six originals written by Norcia, and another four penned by band members, but overall it is a superbly arranged modern take on classic Chicago blues. If Muddy Waters was still out there in 2014, he and his band would sound a lot like this--and that's a good thing.Of course, the quintet is coming off a productive 2013, backing Sugar Ray Rayford on his acclaimed album "Dangerous," (and Rayford will join them for a "Two Sugars" set at the Marshfield fest), and seeing Noricia win two Blues Music Awards and a Grammy nomination for his work on the all-star tribute, "Remembering Little Walter.""You always like to be yourself," Norcia said when we mentioned that classic Chicago blues comparison, "but I would think anyone could hear a lot of the influence of Willie Dixon's songwriting in my music. And I also think part of that similarity comes because we have also had the same band together so long, just as those Chicago guys did.""We all celebrate the 35 years together, with that seven year gap in the middle from 1991-98 when I was with Roomful of Blues," said Norcia, from his Rhode Island home. "But the reality is that Neil Gouvin and I have been playing together for forty years or more--we were friends in high school. Mudcat Ward, and Anthony Geraci--my fellow Italian, are like brothers to me. And of course Monster Mike Welch, who we all knew as a teenage guitar phenom, is now 34 years old and in his fifteenth year with us--and still referred to as 'the newbie."Over those years, and even during some of Norcia's stint fronting Roomful (he appears on three of their best albums), the Bluetones backed a long list of the music's icons. Norcia himself has been on sixty-odd albums, and his bandmates aren't far behind. Ward and geraci, for instance, were with Norcia when the band backed the Grammy-nominated 1999 album "SuperHarps," featuring harmonica aces like Charlie Musselwhite, Billy Branch, and James Cotton."After all these years together the communication we have is telepathic," said Norcia. "Take a song like "Misery" on the new CD, which is a good example. That tune doesn't follow a traditional 12-bar blues progression, and it deviates with extra beats here and there. That sort of stuff just happens when I'm singing and playing, and when I'm with these guys, there's no need for even hand signals--they know where I'm going. It's like driving a Cadillac."Norcia is a Stonington, Connecticut native who gained his first notoriety in the blues scene when he moved to Providence. Before long he and his Bluenotes were house band at a local pub, and soon became the unofficial house band at the old Speakeasy in Cambridge. By that time he'd connected with a young guitarist named Ronnie Horvath, who'd left Boston University to chase his musical dreams, and had not yet become Ronnie Earl."Ronnie and Mudcat called my drummer for a gig," said Norcia. "The drummer really dug playing with Ronnie and Mudcat, so he suggested me as a vocalist, and we all gelled right away. Later, we heard Anthony Geraci opening a show for Muddy Waters, and gave him a call. Anthony quit school to go on the road with us. That's the group we had until Ronnie left to join Roomful of Blues."The Bluetones' guitar slot has been a much admired, very demanding but rewarding position, as Earl was followed by Kid Bangham (now a Carver resident), and Troy Gonyea, before Welch came on board.It is one of those music business anomalies that despite decades of such excellence, both as performer and bandleader, Norcia, 60, might have achieved his biggest recognition from that tribute album last year, where he stood out even among an all-star lineup of blues harp players."Making that record was quite a trip, but I've been playing Little Walter songs since I was 18 years old," said Norcia. "What set Little Walter apart was his sense of innovation: his harmonica playing was so very melodic and fresh, sounding just like a horn section all its own. I have listened to his music over and over again, and what people don't understand--because it is blues--is that his music is so joyful. Nowadays with all the re-issues out there, I love to hear his alternate takes. All of his solos, every single take you hear, are just mind-blowing. I still aspire to be one-tenth the musician Little Walter was."But if the late Little Walter, who died tragically at 37, favored fresh improvisation on every take, some of his fans aren't that adventurous."I have learned to stay away from Little Walter covers in my live shows," Norcia pointed out. "People seem to expect you to play exact covers, just like the records, note-for-note. What we call 'the blues nazis' get upset if you improvise on them, but as I said, you have to be yourself."Yanking the traditional blues style--we are after all, fifty years past Muddy Waters and Little Walter's heyday--into contemporary music with modern lyrics, is a difficult task. But Norcia has always been able to pen smart and memorable tunes, and since his baritone voice is so versatile he can evoke guttural Muddy Waters one moment, and swinging Cab Calloway the next, he can get them across to a widely divergent audience."My songwriting tries to tell a story, and it's usually something that has happened to me," he explained. "An examples from the new CD is "It's Never As Bad As It Looks," which was inspired by a buddy of mine, who became paralyzed, but still has the best attitude about his life. 'Our Story' is another true-life one, kind of a synopsis of the forty years my wife and I have been married. On that tune, I figured that blues songs are always about alcohol and cheating, so why not have a love song, about a relationship that works in spite of all the obstacles a musician's life brings? We're on the road an awful lot, and believe me, it is so nice to come back home."Norcia noted that the band makes an average of three European jaunts every year, and this summer is packed with music festivals, including events in Ottawa and Toronto recently.